Introduction Terje Tvedt and Terje Oestigaard
THE CHALLENGE Not far from the trendiest restaurants of the Seine’s west bank in Paris, and to the south of France, one can enter a world where discussions about secular modernity and postmodernism give way to the worship of the ‘water of life’ and a belief in miracles. A faith affirmed by the actions of millions of people every year. The idea that the worship of water belongs to the past, and to a more ‘primitive’ society, is mistaken: never before in human history have so many millions of people received holy water, holy baths or received God by being baptized in water. Every year from three to five million people visit Lourdes at the foot of the Pyrenees. No other place in the Christian world, except Rome, receives so many pilgrims. In this French village with its holy water, in the shops that surround the basilica, commerce is flourishing. Wherever one looks there are both large and small water bottles on display. Some are in the shape of the Virgin Mary, others are like the standard plastic gallon flasks fancied by permanent campers. It is mildly absurd to observe someone strolling down a bustling street with a Marlboro cigarette or the evening edition of Le Soir in one hand, and a little Virgin Mary bottle filled with holy water in the other. In the square in front of the basilica are thousands of people who cannot move unaided. Among the motley multinational crowd, who are driven by their helpers from the holy springs to the holy baths, it is hard not to be moved. Their concentration during the processions, the communal hymns, or the chanted prayers, seems to infuse the entire place. One witnesses a manifestation of the power of faith and prayer, a collective activity practised in aid of the many thousands of people who cling, visibly and intensely, to what might be their ultimate hope: that the holy water will heal them. At Lourdes, in the country where modern rationalism celebrated